Various work vehicles are designed to work strips or swaths of crop fields. For example, various spraying, planting and tillage implements may be outfitted with various shanks, spikes, tines and disks to open and close or rake the ground and/or crop to complete various ground- and/or crop-working treatments (e.g., seeding, soil aeration, nutrient application, and so on). Windrowers, mower-conditioners and other cutting machines may have large cutting heads (carried either at the front or rear of the vehicle) that cut down and disperse various crops (e.g., grasses, hays, legumes, herbs or other cultivated plants). Harvesting machines of various types (e.g., combines, cotton harvesters, sugarcane harvesters and the like) may have large headers with various blades, spindles, drums and other components to cut, pull or otherwise separate the desired constituents of the crop from the ground and/or other residual parts of the plant.
All of these machines, being either self-powered vehicles or towed implements, have ground-contacting wheels or tracks to support the machines off the ground, generally away from the crop, and to propel or aid in propelling the machines in a travel direction along the crop field. The machines may be constructed in a configuration that reduces damage to crop from being contacted by the machine body or the wheels or tracks. For example, self-powered sprayers may have large diameter wheels that give the machine high ground-clearance as needed to pass over tall crop. Alternatively, the machines may be adapted to process the crop in a manner that limits unintended contact with the machines. For example, windrowers and other cutting machines may have wide wheel bases between the wheels or tracks of which cut crop may be laid out in windrows for later retrieval and processing (e.g., by a baler implement). Since various different machines of various wheel bases (or other key dimension) may work the same crop, the windrows may be formed in narrow strips to leave wide areas of open and unused field between the windrows on which ride the wheels or tracks of the machines. Processing the crop in ways such as this may be inefficient in certain respects.